Synthesis of Course

At the beginning of the semester I was (a little) doubtful that I would learn a lot about how you can use literacy in math and how math uses literacy.  It seemed like other subjects used literacy but math was math and so it didn't.  Wow, was I wrong!  This course really opened my eyes to how mathematics uses literacy and when it does it can be very beneficial to student's learning.
I want to touch a two specific topic.  For example comprehension instruction in math.  How many of us read through a math story problem and feel like this:

I now know how to help students look at this and comprehend what they are reading. I will use before, during and after reading activities and strategies to help students comprehend what they read.  I will also help students prepare for readings (or word problems) by activating background knowledge and setting a clear purpose for the reading.  

In this class I also learned how to structure my classroom so that students can have the opportunity to communicate using oral language.  I want to have think-alouds be a very common thing in my classroom.  I think that they really help students in learning.  Additionally if a student is thinking-aloud I, as the teacher, can see exactly what they do and don't know.  So if a student says they don't understand I'm not guessing at what they don't understand, instead I can see what part they don't get from the think-aloud.  

To put it simply, I learned many helpful techniques and strategies to using literacy in mathematics.  I will be using these techniques and strategies in my classroom in the future.  I also learned about language and the many aspects thereof.  I feel like I know what literacy and language are now and I can affectively implement them into my teaching in the future.